Someday Maybe

A/N: So, I got a job. You might have noticed. Or at least inferred from the lack of chapters. I am, at present, 5,556 words behind and this disappoints me immensely but I am not going to give up. I like parts of this chapter but the ending... well, I mostly just wanted to post something up so... I'll be writing more today. A lot more. Perhaps there will be another chapter.

Thank you my my reviewers and my apologies for not responding this time I want to get back to writing.



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The airport had seemed so much less annoying after Ty started to focus on the ringing that echoes in Aiden’s head where Ty would usually find surface thoughts. Over breakfast Aiden figured they should refer to the phenomena, which he did not refer to in so many words, as “interference” because it fit in with the radio-frequency analogy Ty liked to use and the word was innocuous enough that it was something they could refer to without having to worry about being overheard or pretend they were discussing a movie or novel.

Ty spent the plane ride feeling nauseous and Aiden spent it being as annoying and clingy as possible. The plane itself was huge and there was plenty of amusement to be had by Aiden burning the eyes of any homophobic bigots that happened to be in sight by acting overly-concerned about Ty’s ill feelings and touching him as much as the older male would tolerate. He would later admit, though, that this was one of the best plane rides he had yet experienced.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t all-too-grateful when they touched down and finally left the second airport. There was a hotel. Eating. Sleeping. There was a secretive meeting to collect the weapons and other things they were being helpfully provided with. There was more eating. Plotting. Planning. Stalking. Sneaking around. Sleeping. The details blurred into one another. Deciding they were as prepared as they were ever going to be.

But those details were all well-lost now as he strained to hear anything beyond the pounding in his ears. Quiet. Nothing. This was terrifying. This wasn’t a smash and grab and it wasn’t the easy sneaking in-and-out of their last mission. This was pure insanity. Ty couldn’t get the “Mission Impossible” theme out of his head.

They weren’t after something or some information from a computer system, they weren’t here to dig into someone’s brain and find out their secrets. They weren’t here to torture or to kill. They were here to kidnap someone. And despite the fact that this was their goal it had all seemed so simple at first.

The property had a big gate but it didn’t extend beyond the end of the driveway, they calmly walked around it and well enough away from the gatehouse that they wouldn’t be spotted. This place wasn’t a hotel and there were only so many people who could possible be watching them. They just walked up to the house from the direction of the stable and servants quarters and such where the place was suspiciously lacking in windows no doubt to block off the eyesore of the outbuildings. There were, fortunately for them, a few windows at ground level. Ty sensed no thoughts behind any of them but Aiden’s little trick of deciding whether or not they were actually a good idea took a few minutes longer and finally he nodded at one of the windows. Ty used a slender metal tool with a magnetized hook at the end to wedge into the window and unhook the latch so they could slide it open.

The lightly rubberized pads on the tips of the fingers and palm of Ty’s gloves provided enough friction for him to press his hands to the glass and shove the window up until it caught in place. They both scrambled up through the window into what seemed to be a storage room of some kind and closed the window behind them. So far so good. It was... pretty easy, in fact. They carefully picked their way to the door among boxes and sheet shrouded furniture. The fact that it was night outside meant that even a penlight used to pick out obstacles could be dangerous. As much of a risk as tripping over a box and causing a ruckus so they had to be doubly careful.

Ty could hear no thoughts as they finally made it to the door. He looked to Aiden and waited for him to do his thing. He nodded almost immediately, apparently whatever sense he had tapped into before they had entered the room through the window had given him enough knowledge to know that leaving now was safe. Ty eased the door open so it didn’t make any betraying noises and gently shut it behind them. He glanced left and then right and cocked his head to the side. Aiden nodded to the right. They turned and went in that direction. Just around the next corner was a narrow set of stairs that climbed steeply upwards. Servants stairs. Ty paused. No one on the stairs. Aiden squinched his eyes shut for a few moments and finally opened them and nodded.

Ty went first, running his gloved hand carefully along the wall to keep his balance. He held his other hand out behind him and Aiden grasped it, following him blindly into the darkened stairwell of the giant old house. Aiden was less accustomed to this sneaking around business so he let the older male make the rules and set the pace. They both wore gloves and hats and soft shoes that made little sound but were otherwise dressed normally. A house wasn’t someplace you could really blend in. Either you belonged there or you didn’t. They didn’t so they had to rely on avoiding people totally but once out of the house with their prize and back to civilization they’d need to look as normal as possible.

They didn’t pause at the second floor or the third but went straight to the top, the fourth floor. The fourth floor was silent save for two things. One was a soft wordless lullaby that repeated over and over and reminded Ty of the mobile-style ones people in movies always had for their babies. That’s what it was, in fact, a mobile. The other sound was nothing that Aiden could hear, of course, it was... how would you describe a child’s dreams? To Ty it was a soft murmuring susurrration and hazy colors that entrapped no meaning he could understand. But that was only how his brain interpreted it, if it had been someone else they might have described it differently. It brought a smile to his face. It was... beautiful. If only more people had minds as beautiful as that of a dreaming child.

Ty cocked his head in the direction of the bedroom in which the child slept. Aiden drew in a deep breath as he concentrated. He nodded. They headed toward the bedroom. Wispy dark hair and soft, soft skin. Angelic and cute and every other positive description that every got applied to children. That was this child they were going to kidnap. Aiden looked... concerned that he got the dubious job of carrying her in the- Ty’s mind couldn’t find the words to name the child sling thingy that strapped on like a backpack in the front and cradled the girl to his chest once they got her into it properly. She didn’t waken or cry and truthfully it only took a tiny touch to her mind to ensure that she would remain asleep for the time being.

They left her room. Everything had been so easy. Of course, Ty didn’t expect it to be a cake walk. There had to be a reason they didn’t have any information on this place. There had to be a reason it was supposed to be so risky. And of course, as though summoned, footsteps began to pound up the main stairs. Fuck! Fuck, there was no time to stop and try to figure out the right course of action. Ty grabbed Aiden’s arm and jerked him into the nearest empty room, quickly but silently closing the door before the people to whom the feet belonged reached the top of the stairs.

He unconsciously held his breath as he listened for their thoughts. Guards. Lots of them. And not your stereotypical lazy American guard who sits about watching monitors and eating doughnuts. For one thing, they were very definitely not in America, and for another these guards seemed trained with a least some kind of military precision and that Ty could tell from the way their boots pounded in unison as they marched up the stairs. The images he picked up made it known that they knew there were intruders. They hadn’t seen them but apparently they’d tripped some kind of silent alarm on the window he’d jimmied open. So, alarms but no surveillance equipment. Highly trained guards who were guarding... what? Just the family who lived here? They were immediately concerned (and rightly so) about the girl but didn’t know why she was important just that she was.

They would search her room first. They’d have sealed off the exits. They’d be careful, methodical. They had all the time in the world to be careful, to search every spot and find them because of course they couldn’t escape. Fuck! Ty wanted to scream but managed to restrain himself. Aiden had his eyes shut, his hands covering his face. If it had been someone else- anyone else- the blond probably would have thought he was silently panicking but he knew that the other was frantically seeking a possible future path that would get them out of this situation alive and unharmed and hopefully with their mission objective.

Aiden finally, finally, after what seemed like an eternity nodded toward the window. Ty could only hope it hadn’t been too long, that the guards were still busy searching the little girl’s room and that they hadn’t begun to fan out yet. The window was easy to open from the inside and in moments they were both crouched on the ledge outside the window of the castle-like manor house. Ty carefully, ever-so-carefully shut the window all but the barest crack and they both moved away from it.

He breathed a sigh of relief, hoping it wasn’t premature. It was then he noticed that it was cold. Not the same kind of cold like it was back home but cold enough to raise goosebumps and too cold to be outside in footy pajamas like the little girl. Hopefully if they weren’t out here too long... They needed to think of a plan. God, Ty, think you should be good at it by now. First, he reached up to remove his hat to put on the girl because keeping a child’s head warm was the most important thing, hadn’t he read that somewhere? Aiden shook his head and took off his own and put it on her. His own relatively dark hair was less distinguishable than Ty’s bright blonde so it made more sense or at least that’s what his actions said.

“I know it’s- I know we’re not supposed to but we have to split up.” Aiden whispered. “I can’t see...” He shook his head. “I think I can climb down to the third floor but I don’t dare try further. And then I just need time to make it through the rest of the house and out and away.” Ty nodded in understanding.

“I can distract them.” He confirmed. Luck. They were lucky that no one had thought to look outside yet. Ty focussed on the thoughts within the house as Aiden carefully, cautiously maneuvered to where he could use some of the decorative molding of the façade to climb down to the third floor. The guards were still on this floor. They seemed to have searched the room they had come from already so Ty made his way back toward that window.

“I’ll meet with you by where we came in in half an hour.” Aiden said firmly. Ty only nodded mutely. It was hard, working within the parameters of a vision that could go horribly wrong. It was the near future. Half an hour. Fairly solid. But still malleable enough that... something could go wrong. Horribly wrong. His hands were shaking a little as he pressed his hands to the glass of the window and pushed it upward from the outside and slipped in.

He paused, concentrated and tried to count how many guards there were. So many. He had a gun but... Well, a gun was only so fast and they had weapons as well. And his little trick that would give a person a heart attack took less time. He might have risked it if he could have seen their positions and been able to kill off only isolated ones. Instead he went for a tactic he had tried once or twice before but only ever as a game. “I’m here.” He said quietly into all their minds at once and they all turned in a dozen directions trying to locate the source of the voice they thought was right near them. Even the guards sealing the stairs thought he had slipped by them somehow and was down them.

“Whoops! Over here now.” He made his mental voice sound playful as he spoke to them again. They were confused enough now but they could still see and hear normally. If he left this room they’d still find them. And blind as he was to their precise positions he would accidentally lead at least one of them to this room if he continued playing his little game. He needed them blind and confused.

For the same reason he couldn’t kill them one-by-one he also couldn’t blind them one by one. He could project things to all of them all at once. It was like speaking into a loudspeaker and forcing them to hear. But unlike the loudspeaker he wasn’t limited to sound only. He could project emotions or sights as well. And that was what he ended up doing. He called up the memory of an explosion he had witnessed. The flash of the fire had been blinding and the sound of it deafening, he’d been so confused, so afraid. He hadn’t wanted to move or do anything but cover his ears and cower. This was what he projected to them. The explosion itself and the noise that accompanied it and all the emotions that came after it.

The light and sound wouldn’t physically damage their eyes or ears but it would take their brains a while to sort that out and even if it happened more quickly than anticipated they would still have to deal with the overwhelming feelings of confusion and terror. He sent the explosion to them, projected as loudly and vividly as he had ever tried to manage and then he opened the door of his room he was hiding in. It was a funny sight to see most of those physically imposing men cowering on the floor with their arms flung over their ears and the few still standing staggering blindly into walls and tripping to join their comrades on the floor.

Ty stepped over them carefully, still moving as silently as possible just in case. He felt a pang of success as he started to step over a guard lying across the top of the servant’s stairs. It shouldn’t have happened but the man’s hand snagged his ankle. He instinctively yanked it free but sent himself enough off-balance that he pitched forward into the stairwell and tumbled down it. He landed in an ungraceful heap at the bottom of the first switchback and could only be grateful that these stairs didn’t go all the way down like the grand staircase.

And the pain hit all at once, every part of him that had been jarred or bumped or bruised on the way down. He had to get up. He had to get up now because in a few minutes the pain was going to separate into individual points of agony and prevent him from getting up altogether. In a few minutes the guards would be recovering from his trick and he wasn’t so sure he could focus enough to do it again.



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A/N: Sorry. I dislike ending with cliffhangers but I mostly just wanted to post something. Reviews of encouragement for catching up?